But, in Crystal`s just-released ``City Slickers,`` it`s a brilliant brand of loco. This ludicrous trail mix produces the kind of ingenious chemistry that Crystal produced when teamed with Meg Ryan in ``When Harry Met Sally.``

It also manages to be as deeply moving, maybe more so.

The title speaks of a comedy concept that dates back to Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello: Some dudes go west, meet up with real cowboys and make fools of themselves. But never was the idea played out quite like this.

Though ``City Slickers`` is in part a truly wild and woolly romp, it transcends slapstick and satire.

The story concerns three New York buddies who are approaching 40. Crystal is a radio time salesman who loves his wife and two kids but feels trapped. Bruno Kirby is a sporting goods salesman who tries to cope through macho indulgences like sport parachuting and fooling around. Daniel Stern is a supermarket manager married to a woman so fiendishly domineering she makes the hag in ``Throw Momma from the Train`` seem endearing.

As their frustrations near the breaking point, Kirby, who`s always luring his pals on frantically escapist ``vacations,`` persuades them to try a dude ranch experience-one that will take the Gotham greenhorns on an actual trail drive from New Mexico to Colorado with real cowboys and 400 head of real cattle.

The improbable and equally tenderfoot ``vacationers`` who join up include a landscape architect on the rebound played by Helen (``Supergirl,``

``Ruthless People``) Slater. (In one scene, she`s oblivious to a cattle stampede because she`s listening to her Sony Walkman.)

They all come under the care and terrifyingly manly scorn of trail boss Palance, who plays an aging cowboy confronting trail`s end.

Crystal, who makes his debut as executive producer and creator (he came up with the original idea), calls it his ``coming of middle-age movie.``

``This movie is very much my voice,`` he said. ``And the movie is very much the things I`m going through. I took my daughter to college this year. That was profound-a shock.``

``City Slickers`` addresses mid-life crisis, contemplation of mortality and the general meaning of life as wittily and thoughtfully as a Woody Allen film. Crystal, however, gives us the flip side of mordant.

There are some tragic moments and the wit is occasionally as wicked as it is antic, but good humor and humanity win out in the end.

Though there are a couple of bad guys and even some gunplay, this is a very contemporary movie. Some of the trail talk includes instruction on getting a VCR to work, and four of the film`s five love stories could have found a home on ``thirtysomething`` (if that series had funnier writers).

Actually, ``Slickers`` has six love stories. Crystal (along with the rest of the cast, and the audience) falls in love with a calf named Norman.

As he irreverently put it in a post-filming interview, ``This is a cross between `Deliverance` and `Bambi.` ``

Crystal said he got the idea for the film watching a television show about fantasy vacations. He jotted ``cattle drive`` down on a pad, and then got another idea: Jack Palance.

`` `Shane` was the first movie I ever saw and I never forgot it,``

Crystal said.

Palance, who spends more time now on his California ranch and Pennsylvania farm than making westerns, readily agreed to take the part.

``I loved it,`` he said. ``Without hesitation.``

Crystal hired writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo ``Parenthood`` Mandel to work up a script.

But it was Crystal`s idea, of course, to have his character`s mother

(Jayne Meadows) awaken him with a happy birthday call at 5:14 in the morning, the exact hour of his birth. It`s something his own mother does.

``She actually calls me at the time I was born on every birthday,`` he said. ``We used pretty much the exact same words, too. I just changed the time so she wouldn`t realize it was her.``

Searching for a ``collaborative`` director, he came up with Ron Underwood, a newcomer whose directorial debut was ``Tremors.``

The casting included acquiring the herd of cattle, which Crystal had to buy (Kevin Costner only rented the buffalo used in ``Dances With Wolves``).

The moviemakers had as much trouble with the hoofed performers as you`d expects from greenhorns.

``It was such a pain,`` said Underwood. ``They never did what you wanted them to. In one scene, when Billy and the boys were supposed to be rounding them up, they went every which way until there wasn`t a cow left in the shot. I thought, `Oh, God, how am I going to get through 70 days like this?`

``I love actors. I would be happy not to be around cows for a long time.``